Did you hear the one about the full water storage and authorities releasing water because there's rain on the way?

Yes, everyone's talking about water authorities and their priorities and policies when a big rain event is predicted and the water storage is full.

Did you know that none other than Egypt was having this exact issue in the 1970s?

Dr Kingsley E Haynes, an Eminent Scholar and Professor currently based at the George Mason University in Fairfax, USA, went to work in the Nile River - Lake Nasser regions of Egypt where they were asking themselves some of the same questions we are now trying to answer in Australia.

"I arrived in Egypt just as the Soviets left and before the Americans arrived," he says, "and one of the questions was 'how do you operate the high dam now that it's full?', because for the last ten years before that, you simply allowed the water through that was needed, for hydroelectric, for irrigation and for navigation and for flooding of various kinds that you needed, for flushing."

"Anything left over and above that you kept behind the dam."

"So it took ten years for the dam to fill."

Once it was full, there were conflicts of priorities.

"On the one hand, you want the dam as full as possible in case you get the big drought, and you want it as empty as possible in case you get the big flood."

The solution was all about modelling, looking upstream to discover what the flows are going to look like and then deciding where and when the water should be released.

Dr Haynes's current position concentrates on small business.

He runs a university outreach centre in the US, outside of Washington DC, and has a lot to say about small businesses, as well as the effect that big businesses can have on smaller towns.

He has been in Australia to see what's happening with our regional towns and pass on knowledge as to how America has supported small business in regional towns.